Diana Rodgers in New Zealand

Diana Rodgers, US dietitian and coauthor of the book Sacred Cow: The Case For (Better) Meat, was in Auckland last week.

Check out an article in the Farmers Weekly, Fighting the anti-meat narrative.

One policy Diana found troubling during her visit to New Zealand is that livestock farmers are being paid to permanently take their land out of food production and plant pine trees to offset the emissions from their beef production.

In their book, Diana and coauthor, Robb Wolf, show the absurdity of this, making the case that biogenic carbon cycles should be viewed differently than the green-house gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Also in the book is information on why our obesity rate is not the result of an overconsumption of red meat – in fact our meat consumption has dramatically decreased over the last decade as our hospitalisation rates from iron deficiency (in addition to rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes) have gone up.

The book sheds light on all the myths and misconceptions around eating meat. It tackles the subject from an ethical, environmental and nutritional standpoint. I hope this book goes a long way to achieving its goal in raising public awareness about the misleading propaganda around nutrition, ethics and climate change in mainstream media.

If you are a farmer and are being pressured into taking your land out of food production, please consider fighting back by refusing to do so.